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This goes along with drag used to increase range. I was once allowed to try out a little 'dohicky' that when glued to the back of a normal paintball it increased it's range significantly. I shot it out of a modified P68 at 300fps and it had a shot pattern of less than a foot at 150 yards. Some work would have to be done with the matterial it was made out of to make it paintball safe and it couldn't be used in standard paintball guns or loaders, but boy did that thing fly. I can't go into what exactly it is or how it works because it's still a product under development and may even be used by the military in the future. It's probibly not paintball legal for any type of play because it's technically no longer a ball. If anyone knows where I can find the rules regarding the shape/size/mass/hardness restrictions of paintballs I'd be very thankful. I hope these things can be made in a paintball legal way so I can use them for woodsball, finally a reason to have a scope on a paintball gun.

I am curious to what you are using... but I know Tom already has a set up that uses some fins attached to the back of the ball to make it like a little missle for his military work... I don't have the numbers but if I you can guess the range and accuarcy would be pretty damn spiffy...

I am curious to what you are using... but I know Tom already has a set up that uses some fins attached to the back of the ball to make it like a little missle for his military work... I don't have the numbers but if I you can guess the range and accuarcy would be pretty damn spiffy...

Sounds like Tom's got a similar solution to the same problem, probibly even for the same military contract. So in the interest in everyone keeping their various jobs and me keeping my thumbs broken, I'm not going to share any more details.

he made the fn303 a non lethal weapons system powered by hpa, i am interested in how the fins work, cause for woods ball id rather have to load each round by hand and have a extreme range than anything else, i think form the pictures though the shells are actually plastic, not very much information was provided
and it was stored in a clip like the ones for the old tommy guns, the circular ones, it holds 15 shots and comes in stand alone, or can be mounted toa ar-15 style gun

I thought about a dimpled paintball as well. However, instead of putting dimples all over the paintball, copy the design of the "happy non-hooker". This is a golf ball designed to eliminate the "slice" that many people encounter. It is made with a dimpled "stripe" around the equator of the ball. The smooth surfaces near the poles provided more air resistance and acted as "fins" causing the ball to correct itself in flight. I believe the only problem is, as I understand it, the stripe has to be oriented in such a way that the smooth sides of the ball are to the left and right of the path of travel and level with the ground for a straight flight.

yes and no. i saw a very long and detailed conversation on this somewhere, paintball spinning cannot be controlled because paintballs are filled with a liquid. it's not solid, like a baseball or golfball. try this; throw a baseball at a target. now take one of those solid shelled plastic (but hollow) wiffle balls, and inject water in it. throw it the same way at the same target. same results? i think not. and you have to remember that paintballs are traveling at @ 200 mph, not @40 (which is what an average baseball pitch is).

Yeah, you _can_ spin a paintball. The Flatline barrel works because a paintball spins. It's all about viscosity.

Just about every paintball shot out of a barrel spins. The problem isn't spinning, it's amount of spin. The problem is getting a paintball to spin efficiently enough to make a difference. This thread is about dimpled paintballs though and not spin......................

Although to make the dimples make a difference you would have to have some SERIOUS spin, like with a golf ball................................

Rail gun

Originally Posted by ShinyGuy

I was reading about putting things in orbit with railguns. They were talking about how at hyper-sonic speeds you do see a significant decrease in drag with a pointed nose vs. a rounded nose. The problem was that the pointed nose wasn't able to disapate the heat as well as the rounded nose. The conclution they came to was that it would actually be pretty easy to get cargo into orbit with a railgun once we developed material that could withstand the heat a reshaped launch vehicle would be subjected to.

Now keep in mind that this was talking about mach 7+ and isn't really relevent to paintball. I just thought you'd find it interesting. I wish I could that paper now, It was an interesting read.

Hi Mr paintabll store technician can you help me? My rail gun chopps paint real bad at about 45,000 fps. LOL
Im dont see any paint or shell in the breach so maybe its a "rail break"?

This may just be redundancy but anytime you try to change the trajectory of a round ball you are going to run into issues like the aforementioned. The only real way to change the trajectory and ballistic behaviors of a projectile would be to change the trailing edge. Like in actual ballistic science. If one were to change the leading edge of a bullet you would find that very little effect is achieved as far as trajectory is concerned. You could cut an "X" or drill a hole into the front of the bullet but not much would happen to distance traveled, drop ratio, or flight pattern.

Altering the aft end of the bullet however has drastic effect! An "X" or dove tailed bullet would be completely erratic in flight pattern and very dangerous. Just imagine a brass slug traveling at 2500 fps and behaving like a Super Swirl out of a Tippmann Flatline!! I dont think I would want to be anywere near it!! Basicaly the point being made here has two factors.

1st - The reason spin from a riffled barrel on a paintball doesn't work too well is because there is no sence of a trailing edge for a trajectory to set a base for flight and maintain that base. Some may say that certain civil war era muskets used round balls and rifled bores. BUT soon after they found that it didn't help too much and developed what we view as a bullet today. It was just loaded like a muzzleloader.

2nd - Unless you change the trailing edge of a paintball, thereby changing the entire manufacturing process thereof you will never achive great success with rifled bores in paintball.

I think this thread died because everyone is stuck on the dimples, which have been shown to not work, when the real point is the surface roughness in general.

a paintball with some surface roughness should have less drag than a smooth paintball, given that it's reynolds number is high enough to be close to the transition between laminar and turbulent. The roughness can be very small and come in many forms, not just dimples.

Spin has nothing to do with why surface roughness decreases drag. I have never seen anything in fluid mechanics that ties the effects of roughness to spin, in fact I have seen evidence against it.

this shows a smooth sphere and a sphere with a small wire (or possibly a thin depression) running around the front of it. The sphere on the right has a turbulent boundary layer and much less drag.

The keys here is that the sphere is not spinning (see the rod coming out the back to keep it stable), the roughness is small relative to the size of the sphere, and it is located before the point where separation would normally occur (separation occurs around 80 degrees from the front of the ball)

With dimples there can be many problems including poor contact between the paint and barrel. I don't know why dimples wouldn't work well, but they are not the only way to go achieve decreased drag on a sphere. something as small as the seam of the paintball, or a rough patch at the front of the paintball could cause the boundary layer to be transitioned to turbulent.

Someone mentioned lines scored longitudinally and laterally on the paint, this could be a good solution and one easily tested.

I think that increasing paintball range using this technology is possible and that it shouldn't be given up on, as it seems like it has (until it can be explained satisfactorily why it is not feasible)

A good explanation of the fluid mechanics involved can be found here however keep in mind that the lift in his diagram is purely from the back spin shown on the golf ball.

I think that increasing paintball range using this technology is possible and that it shouldn't be given up on, as it seems like it has (until it can be explained satisfactorily why it is not feasible)

Exactly!

I was thinking that maybe Perfect Circle Paintballs could just swap the molds for their polystyrene shells, and try out various surface textures.

I think that increasing paintball range using this technology is possible and that it shouldn't be given up on, as it seems like it has (until it can be explained satisfactorily why it is not feasible)

what if the paintballs were sponge inside inpregnated with paint with the standard type shell would this not fly better

also since someone mentioned rail guns why cant a paintball air powered rail gun be made where the paint goes in one end and is propelled gradually all along the barrel by air pulses coming in vent holes and out the other end

what if the paintballs were sponge inside inpregnated with paint with the standard type shell would this not fly better

also since someone mentioned rail guns why cant a paintball air powered rail gun be made where the paint goes in one end and is propelled gradually all along the barrel by air pulses coming in vent holes and out the other end

I don't know how the .50 balls will fare. Like many people have previously stated...Rap4 has been around for a few years with their .43 cal stuff and it is not really selling well. All depends on the marketing.

For anyone that has seen the Mythbusters episode titled "Clean Car vs Dirty Car", they put surface texture to the test. They put especially looked at golf ball dimples. It seems that regardless of dimple size or object shape, it showed a significant reduction in drag and an improvement in aerodynamic performance. Golf balls traveled farther and cars got better gas mileage.

Perhaps this topic should be reevaluated and discussed further. Was distance ever considered in the original analysis or only accuracy? What about dimple size? Is the raw data still available? The original pics don't appear to be available anymore. I'd like to know in what way the dimpled paintballs didn't work.